How many college teams do 2 training days hard in a row (Daniels)?

running_student wrote:

So I am almost through reading (more like studying) Daniels' Running Formula and I've noticed that he REALLY likes the idea of training 2 days hard in a row. I understand the science behind this (DOMS begins its peak 48 hrs later), but as a runner, I always feel more stiff, tired, and sore the day after a hard workout.

In HS my coach employed this theory of doing 2 consecutive hard days. In college, we almost ALWAYS did hard days T, Th, with Sa long. (or M W hard w/ Sa race).

What college teams out there do 2 hard days in a row? Do you feel the workouts have to be of slightly lesser quality? If so, do you feel that reducing the quality is actually a good thing in targeting the correct systems or in reducing overtraining?

Sprinters do. Middle distance too.

5.

Do I coach you? wrote:

[quote]running_student wrote:

Sprinters do. Middle distance too.

Sprinters do, but only different energy systems. So maybe a hard speed day monday, hard special endurance day on tuesday. You generally won't see two top end speed days back to back. Doing so would not work well, the cns needs more time to recover.

Middle distance runners might do back to back hard days in a similar way, a hard distance day 24 hours after a hard speed workout, for example.

The only exception is some top athletes do it late in the season once or twice to practice running rounds at nationals/worlds.

For distance runners, I don't agree with the idea of two hard distance workouts back to back.

My college team used to do it to prepare for racing on back to back days at the conference meet. I always ran well at the conference meet but thought I was always better prepared for 4 races in two days than one really fast race on one day.

running_student wrote:

So I am almost through reading (more like studying) Daniels' Running Formula and I've noticed that he REALLY likes the idea of training 2 days hard in a row. I understand the science behind this (DOMS begins its peak 48 hrs later), but as a runner, I always feel more stiff, tired, and sore the day after a hard workout.

In HS my coach employed this theory of doing 2 consecutive hard days. In college, we almost ALWAYS did hard days T, Th, with Sa long. (or M W hard w/ Sa race).

What college teams out there do 2 hard days in a row? Do you feel the workouts have to be of slightly lesser quality? If so, do you feel that reducing the quality is actually a good thing in targeting the correct systems or in reducing overtraining?

This is a good question. 10+ years ago when I bought his 2nd edition I remember seeing the breakdown of his week and he gave a few different options of how to lay out the quality days. I remember thinking, "Two hard days in a row?"

He does explain, if I am remembering correctly, that it will keep them from running the workouts too hard if they know they have a workout the following day and if they are a little fatigued from the day before.

However, I am not a fan of this. I would encourage the following 2-week cycle if possible:

M. Quality

T. Easy w/ strides

W. Quality

T. Medium Long

F. Easy w/ strides

S. Race (Quality)

S. Easy

M. Medium Long

T. Easy w/ strides

W. Quality

T. Easy

F. Easy w/ strides

S. Long Run (Quality)

S. Easy / Recovery

Middle distance for my team does

Sunday - " long run "

Monday - 5-9k worth of work

Tuesday - recovery

Wednesday - quick intervals

Thursday - recovery

Friday - race or speed ladder

Saturday - recovery

We lift twice a week

I always coached my high school team with that method for track. Specifically to prepare to race hard two days in a row at the state meet. If I was coaching at the NCAA level, that would be my method as well specifically for racing conference, regionals, nationals.

It might not turn out the fastest guys in a one-off race, but championship racing is never just one race anyway.

Long run followed by a workout is two hard days in a row.

Why not hill reps & tempo then? Two different energy systems...

If you have enough recovery after the back to back hard days why not?

running_student wrote:

So I am almost through reading (more like studying) Daniels' Running Formula and I've noticed that he REALLY likes the idea of training 2 days hard in a row. I understand the science behind this (DOMS begins its peak 48 hrs later), but as a runner, I always feel more stiff, tired, and sore the day after a hard workout.

In HS my coach employed this theory of doing 2 consecutive hard days. In college, we almost ALWAYS did hard days T, Th, with Sa long. (or M W hard w/ Sa race).

What college teams out there do 2 hard days in a row? Do you feel the workouts have to be of slightly lesser quality? If so, do you feel that reducing the quality is actually a good thing in targeting the correct systems or in reducing overtraining?

If you look at the workouts, the 2 hard workouts paired together tend not to be super hard ones. Things like doing a tempo run followed by rep work is very doable. You don't really get sore or super tired from either of them. On the other hand doing a vo2 max workout and doing a tempo run the following day is much harder.

The system breaks down if you are doing your workouts too fast.

^ he suggests back to back hard days for Tues/Wed for 5k 10k training during phase 3 (first half of racing season) and Tuesday is always interval (vo2 max) followed by a Wednesday threshold/tempo. I guess I understand it keeps them from going too fast but it seems it could also set some guys up for injury unless they just really weren't working out all that hard.

But the hard VO2 max work is on day 1, the easier threshold stuff is on the 2nd day.

I found that the 2nd day feels easy to start with as it is a slower pace then you were doing the day before. Usually he prescribes cruise intervals, they are not too hard, though by the last one you might be happy that it is over!